


The many Leahs of Hel.

by NightsMistress



Category: Journey into Mystery
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1429372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Leah of Hel, who was left as far behind as Loki could imagine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The many Leahs of Hel.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subjunctive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/gifts).



> Thank you ZetaTauri for the last minute beta!

There was a god named Loki Laufeyson who sought to change himself. He did, all too well, and died a lonely terrible death as a consequence. It was a story known only to few, who were powerless to change Loki’s fate. Loki’s fate had been written from the beginning: it could only ever be a tragedy. Loki had no power to change tragedy. At best, he could merely hope to change the inevitability of tragedy, and to find some glimmer of hope for those left behind. This is not his story.

It is instead the story of Leah of Hel, who was left as far behind as Loki could conceive of.

To be a god is to have a multiplicity of existence, bound down by the warp and weft of all stories. The stories that are told about gods shape them, and force them to bow to the yoke of imagination. And Leah was sent back to before the creation of myth and legend. She, alone of all Asgardians, was able to have a story that was not bound to certain narrative tropes.  Where once her story was of the stern and dutiful girl who let herself be destroyed to save the nine realms, now she could be anything she wanted ... if she had the story to tell of it.  She didn't always.  There are not many roles for a stern and dutiful girl who wished to have an independent story of her own.

One story was of her being destroyed by herself. Her hate for Loki burned in her chest, as hate and love are nearly indistinguishable when you feel them so passionately as she, and that caused her downfall. She let it consume her, hollowing out all of what made her Leah of Hel to be a being of vengeance and rage. With no heart in her chest, she no longer hated Loki. Hate simply was what the monster was.

The monster tore at the countryside, leaving scars that would take generations to heal. When you have eternity of nothing more than a soulless, hating shell, generations of people meant nothing. Life meant nothing. It was simply there to be destroyed. That was all it was good for.

The monster was slain at the end. It was a very ignoble story.

Leah was glad to see that particular story fade away into vague memory. That role was tragic the first time it was told, but there are too many stories of a woman turning into a monster out of rage. It is a limiting role, and one that she could never grow out of. So she slipped out through the cracks in that story as it faded away and learned. Vows made in the heat of the moment, even in a moment of utter betrayal, are a terrible thing to follow through on. She no longer hated Loki. She needed her heart and the pain of it burning out was not one she was willing to bear again.

Another story was of a savior for any woman who refused to be locked in a tower to be rescued.  Leah remembered well the role of passive helpmeet for the hero. She remembered how that role stifled her until she thought she might die of it. Better to be the hero instead, with her sword stained with the same shade of red slashed across her lips and her unbound hair tamed by hair sticks made from the bones of the dead.

She was powerful. She was righteous fury bound in the flesh of a slender young woman who spurned armor so that everyone who saw her knew who she was. She was stern to others and herself, and she burned with the conviction of the rightness of what she was doing. Her magic was as quick as her tongue, and twice as sure.

The irony of being a savior to women who wished to not need one did not escape her. But if they did not need saving, then she would have no power.

That story told of how Leah would whisk women away from brash boys who sought to transfer one set of imprisonment for the stifling marriage that comes when you marry ideals rather than people. She was a figure of hope in dark places, and the story was passed from mother to daughter in secret.

It was never written down, and eventually it faded away into vague memory. It was never lost forever, as stories can never truly be lost, but it changed, and Leah changed with it.

Instead of being the avenger, she was the destroyer who tore down prisons before they could be created. She fought with wits and guile against an enemy far stronger than she could dream to be, and toppled them when it best suited her plans. She was the clever maiden without a smile, who solemnly stood by as monoliths fell down around her. She was the story of captives to inspire them to change.

It was in this role that Leah missed Loki. She would wait for him to fill in the silences with his endless chatter about inane things that mattered little. She missed the way that he would dance from foot to foot, and how life was never as interesting as when he was around to be tiresome. Her job was easier now, with all of the variables controlled for rather than trailing after a godling with thought processes like tangled string, but it was not very exciting.

Another story was of Leah who would make a handmaiden of herself and use it to guide the plans of Loki so as to give birth to herself. Leah understood then that the Loki she knew, the one that had cast her adrift into the beginning of time, was not the Loki who set in train the motions. She was one of the few who understood what, and she understood why.

This Leah, or Hela as she was now, was utterly capable of handling Loki. After all, she had had many stories that shaped her into the woman she was. She was able to deal with the lies and tricks of a man who was defined by mischief and chaos.

But this story is not about that Leah, or indeed any of these Leahs. A god is one because they are able to reconcile the various stories into one truth.

This is the story of a Leah who avenged the death of the Loki she knew in the only way that she knew how.

It was not an easy task. Very few resurrections are, especially when the soul in question has been utterly unmade. For anyone else, it would have been beyond their power to end Loki’s story in any other way than the way it had been.

Leah used the surety of self that came with becoming Hela to overcome the first trial, of rain that sought to erode away the stories that made her up. There was no shield against this rain, and she stood fast against the slow unravelling that comes with being a god whose stories are not being told. It was not a new experience for her, as she had been sent back before stories were told. She could withstand this.

She used trickery and guile to slip past the gatekeepers. She whispered to them potentialities of what might be, if only they let her through, and they were convinced by her words. It helped that she was speaking the truth, that the story that had been told was not incompatible with the story that was being told. This story had a different hero, one who had been tempered through betrayal from her friend and had come out still determined to win him free.

And then she stood in a dark cave with a pool of water that absorbed the light from the magic radiating from one hand, naked sword in her other hand, and challenged whoever would listen that she would take Loki back. It was a calculated ploy as narratives always like an underdog. Gods are empowered by stories, and one story can be twisted by another. And there are many stories that choose to ignore the utter destruction of Loki. Leah had read them all before challenging his fate and used this knowledge to bolster the conviction of the Leah as savior.

In one story, conviction was not enough. In one story Leah failed, and learned that there was a difference between stories written by the official writers and ones written by the ones who internalizes the stories and then made them their own.

This is not that story. In this story, she succeeded and pulled Loki out with a magic-lit hand as he is pushed to the surface. He spluttered and coughed for a moment before noticing who his savior was.

“Leah!” Loki said. He was smaller than Leah remembered, until she realized with a start that it was because she was taller than he was. He was still a child, while she was halfway into adulthood. “You rescued me!”

“You are a terrible storywriter,” Leah said as she wiped her hand clean of the oblivion muck that slicked Loki’s clothes. “But you cannot learn to be better like this.”

There was a god named Loki Laufeyson, who tried to change and died for it. There was also a god named Leah of Hel, who changed and with that change had the power to twist a story previously ended so that it was a better ending.

After all, her story was to be continued however she chose.


End file.
